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time - not what you're expecting!

We're always debating time and how it's not linear and all that good stuff. This thread has NOTHING to do with that! No it's something much simpler and basic - it's about how we perceive time in our daily lives. Let me explain.....

I'm an old fart and grew up post-war when the UK used Imperial Units for weight, volumes and expressing the temperature. I grew up with pounds, shillings and pence and most of our imperial units changed when the UK changed over to the metric system. I worked in science all my life and I still routinely use metric and imperial units interchangeably. I'm fortunate I am familiar with all the common and not-so-common units.

Significant to this thread now I also grew up with analogue clocks and watches although we didn't refer to 'em that way as digital displays were rarely seen at that time. I learned to 'tell the time' the traditional way and forty years later when I worked in learning support I found myself working with less-able kids and teaching them how to tell the time. What I found surprised me; not only did these kids not know how to tell even basic time they hadn't come into contact with a traditional clock or watch. I assume their parents would have had digital watches or used a cell phone and if there was a house clock (far from certain) it would likely have been a digital one. Whatever - the kids simply didn't recognise or understand clock-face time so my role was to teach it.

It also made me wonder about what a clock face meant - or indeed a digital display - in practical terms to these kids. As they couldn't relate to twenty five past six, for example, did they understand how many minutes it was before their favorite TV program, for example? But did 6.25 mean anything either? Maybe time has never meant a lot to youngsters and it's only as we age that it takes on significance? Or is there more to it than that?

Take a look at twenty three minutes after seven on an analogue clock. With a bit of familiarity and practice a child can actually see how far 'the big hand' has to move before it's 8 o' clock and time to be in school or whatever. The child doesn't need to know it's indicating that particular time because they can see the hand moving around the dial and heading towards the point when they know something important has to happen. But what if the clock shows 7.23? What does that mean? A child can't do the math working out how many minutes there are between 8.00 and 7.23 or see a point where something has to happen as the minutes display approaches it - or can they? I just don't know. We taught our daughter both digital and analogue time before she went to school and she knew what both meant to the degree a small child does. We would ask her what the time was using both analogue and digital clocks. But without someone doing that for their own kids, who else can? School? Maybe. If there's enough....time!

So now I hear folk saying 6.44 instead of 'almost quarter to seven' 6.30 instead of half past/after six, 12.23 instead of about twenty five past twelve etc. Is that progress or dumbing-down?

IMO it is dumbing down. Here's what I'm seeing:
1)There is no (or little) cursive writing taught anymore. It exercises both sides of the brain.
2)We communicate in 144 character tweets. Younger people tell me not to send emails, they are too long.
3)Music IMO has been degraded. Billie Holiday, Hendrix, the Beatles, Tony Bennett, James Brown, Bach & Chopin could not get a gig in the current music scene.
4)GMO's, flouride, etc, etc IMO dumb us down.
5)Instant gratification rules!

Isn't it the society and its fashionable values that are contributing to our dumbing-down? Not a person or persons but by the fashions of modern life....

If tweeting led to our being succinct I'd laud the change and I'm not confident that using cursive writing would improve folk's ability to communicate effectively - 'pretty writing' doesn't lead to that. Disciplined thinking might. Music, like art, appeals to whom it appeals and fashion is all. I'm far from persuaded that adding fluoride to drinking water for dental health causes dumbing down or for that matter genetically modified organisms...

It seems to me that we are being dumbed down. We are becoming followers or people who are afraid to be different. Nobody likes to think deeply anymore or talk about deep stuff. I have been criticized for expressing my self poorly in my writing by a certain member on this forum, but I do like to think about deep stuff. I'd like to talk about it but nobody is interested. It seems deep to me anyway.